Category: Show Up

The Re:Act newsletter from two weeks ago had an excellent section on preparing for special elections and regularly scheduled elections in 2017 as well as the very important 2018 midterms. I’m going to share it here because I think as many people as possible should see it. I’ve already mentioned and supported several of these organizations and promoted some of these actions in this blog, but seeing everything together is helpful in terms of getting an overview of everything we need to do to get more Democrats and progressives into elected office.

Organizing

✓ Find your local Democratic party office. No matter who you support for Chair, the DNC is likely to be in good hands in the years to come, and will be prioritizing local organizing. A few volunteers for a local rep or state senate candidate can make all the difference.

✓ Sign up with #KnockEveryDoor. This initiative is a set of nationwide, volunteer-led canvasses to organize communities against Trump. Canvass where you live and invite your friends to get involved, especially if you live in a county that flipped from Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016.

✓ Donate to the Movement Voter Project. Efficient, localized donating to maximize impact. The organization talent-scouts both national movement-building efforts and local efforts in all 50 states that are focused on voter engagement. These are organizations where an extra $10 will make the greatest difference for achieving progress in keeping democratic institutions viable and accountable.

Special Elections in 2017

✓ For 2017 special elections, share the below Flippable links. Flippable has compiled a list of the 23 upcoming special elections in 2017. These races provide electoral opportunities to resist the Trump agenda. The organization prioritized three races as targets to flip or hold based on the closeness of the race and the long-term impact of these seats on national politics. They’ve also listed all the elections so people can see the nearest one to them:

House races

✓ Check out Swingleft. Control of the House in 2018 will be decided by a handful of Swing Districts, places where the last election was decided by a thin margin. Find your closest Swing District and join its team to learn about actionable opportunities to support progressives — and defeat Republicans — in that district, no matter where you live.

Senate Races

✓ Follow Roadto2018, a coalition focused on the 2018 midterms, with a specific choice to marshal resources to support 12 specific Senate candidates. Speaking personally, I worry about these races getting the attention they deserve, specifically because they will be tough fights.

Candidates

✓ Sign up at Run for Something, a new group which will recruit and support talented, passionate young people who will “advocate for progressive values now and for the next 30 years, with the ultimate goal of building a progressive bench.”

Voting Rights

✓ Sign up for Let America Vote, a new project by Jason Kander, former senate candidate and secretary of state in Missouri. Says Kander, “We have a voting problem in America. Voting in our country has never been easy, but there’s a new challenge: Politicians are now trying to stop Americans from voting because of who they are likely voting for in an election … Let America Vote will be there to lead the way against it.”

✓ Support VoteRiders, an organization making sure that no eligible citizen is denied his or her right to vote for lack of ID.

Calling is an extremely effective way to reach your reps. We’ve already seen what thousands of phone calls can do: angry constituents forced the GOP to backtrack on gutting the independent ethics committee, have thrown Betsy DeVos’s confirmation into question, and are putting extreme pressure on the GOP to not dismantle Obamacare without something extremely similar to replace it. But even more effective is showing up at office hours, town halls, and other public events that your representative or their staff will be at, fielding constituents’ questions and concerns.

There is no shortage of marches and protests these days (and you should keep an eye out for ones local to you as they spring up – there are many ongoing demonstrations against Trump’s EO on Immigrants and Refugees), but here are two upcoming ones to keep an eye on:

March for Science

The march’s mission statement:

March for Science is an effort comprised of dozens of independent, nonpartisan coordinators. Recent rhetoric has inspired us to march on Washington D.C. and in Satellite Marches across the country. Our mission statement is as follows:

THE MARCH FOR SCIENCE CHAMPIONS PUBLICLY FUNDED AND PUBLICLY COMMUNICATED SCIENCE AS A PILLAR OF HUMAN FREEDOM AND PROSPERITY. WE UNITE AS A DIVERSE, NONPARTISAN GROUP TO CALL FOR SCIENCE THAT UPHOLDS THE COMMON GOOD, AND FOR POLITICAL LEADERS AND POLICYMAKERS TO ENACT EVIDENCE-BASED POLICIES IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST.

The date hasn’t yet been set, but follow their social media accounts to learn more. You can get all the current info and sign up to volunteer at or coordinate a satellite march in your community on their website.

Tax Day (April 15th) Marches for Various Causes

Mark your calendar for April 15th – there are already protests and marches being planned all across the country for Tax Day. Various causes are being represented – I’ll be attending a Black Lives Matter march in Seattle (Westlake Park, 2pm – 6pm!), but I’ve also heard of marches pressuring Trump to release his tax returns and for other causes and grievances. Find out what’s happening near you and go participate.

Call your Senators today (or show up at one of their offices, if you can!) and tell them to vote no on HR7, which would make the Hyde Amendment permanent and make it even more difficult than it already is for low-income women to afford abortion services when needed. In conjunction with Trump re-instating the so-called “Mexico City Policy,” or “Global Gag Rule,” which prohibits any organization overseas from even mentioning abortion in their programming if they receive US federal funds, it’s clear that keeping abortion safe and legal is going to be one of the biggest ongoing fights with this administration.

It’s time to start putting in work to recapture the legislature in 2018, and the legislature and White House in 2020. These organizations can help:

VoteRunLead: Provides training and support to women running for office.

Indivisible: The group behind the Indivisible Guide has inspired many action groups across the country, which have turned into a progressive Tea Party of sorts, cribbing from the Tea Party’s playbook by showing up at Reps’ offices and demanding an audience on the issues that they’re concerned about. Primarily this has been focused on the ACA so far, but there will be lots of things to push back on, and I’m sure that they will involve themselves in the 2018 and 2020 elections to hold Reps accountable for their actions.

SwingLeft: Don’t live in a swing district and want to help? Sign up at SwingLeft and find out where the nearest swing district so that you can volunteer and donate in the next election (and the run up for the 2018 elections has pretty much already started). There was some question about the org’s authenticity as raised in a DailyKos article, but the founders have since clarified their identities and made the leadership more transparent. Check out the site’s about page for more info.

RunForSomething: Sign up to support candidates under 35 or to run for office yourself. The organization is seeking people under 35 who have deep connections to where they live to run for office in the next 10-20 years, with the idea of creating a “bench” of progressive candidates. They’re primarily looking for women and people of color who are interested in running, but anyone under 35 who would run on the Democratic ticket and shares a core of progressive values is encouraged to run.

Resistance Manual: Bookmark this link as a resource for the next four years. It’s an open-source platform with information about Trump’s policies and how to counteract them (in a huge range of topics), as well as information on state and local political issues (which are super important, remember to pay attention to those! Many progressive battles are won when policies can be proven to work at the local level, and it helps to potentially provide state-wide resistance to Trump’s policies).

Road to 2018: An organization marshaling resources to flip and keep seats blue in 2018, specifically focusing on 12 Senate races, 10 of which are Democratic senators whose states voted for Trump in 2016.

Stand Up Republic: For the more conservative-minded anti-Trump folks out there, Stand Up Republic is an organization founded by Evan McMullin and Mindy Finn to “stand up in defense of the fundamental principles that have made this country the true home of liberty and a source of hope for many around the world. Stand Up Republic will build and organize a grassroots movement in defense of liberty, equality, and truth in America. Our priorities will be to uphold the Constitution and defend the democratic norms and institutions upon which the protection of our basic rights depend.” While both founders are on the conservative end of the spectrum, the organization is ostensibly bi-partisan and welcomes all Americans who are concerned about preserving our democratic institutions, which already seem to be under attack by the Trump administration.

Hi readers! I’ve taken most of the last week or so off to give myself a little brain break and recharge for the fights we still have ahead of us. I was so inspired by the millions (!!!) of people who turned out to march this past Saturday. We got under Trump’s skin and showed the country and the world that we’re not going to take this administration lying down. Now we have to back that up with sustained, continuous action, primarily in the form of calling our representatives and showing up to civic events for both local and national politics. This needs to be the beginning of a millions-strong movement, not the entirety of it.

Pissed off about something the Senate is doing? Call your Senators. Want a new piece of legislation to be introduced in the House? Call your Representative. That doesn’t just go for your Members of Congress (MoCs) in D.C. – you can call your state legislative reps as well. Call your governor’s office. Call your mayor’s office. Your city council reps. Show up to events – ask your MoCs when their next constituent event or town hall is. And then show up. Ask questions. Push them. Bring your friends and family with you and have them ask questions too. Largely agree with what your Rep does? Thank them, and ask them to make statements condemning actions that don’t fit with their values and to introduce legislation about issues that you care about. Largely disagree? Tell them so, loudly and repeatedly, and tell them what you want them to do instead. Tell them that you support the ACA, the Endangered Species Act, our National Parks, protecting the rights of women and POC, ending hate crimes, cracking down on police brutality, climate change, transportation, housing affordability, ANYTHING that you can think of that you support, and make them listen to you. Calls are great, showing up at events is even better. Get involved with local political groups and/or your local branch of the Democratic Party. Make politics look closer to the way you want them to look.

I’ll still be posting, hopefully about 3x a week, with concrete actions to take. But we’re in the middle of everything now, so we have to be proactive. Call, call, call, and show up, show up, show up. The Tea Party had pretty bad policies but extremely effective strategies – let’s beat them at their own game.

The IndivisibleGuide is “A practical guide for resisting the Trump Agenda: Former congressional staffers reveal best practices for making Congress listen.”

There is a downloadable guide in both English and Spanish, which documents some of the best activities you can take to subvert Trump’s agenda, and the most effective ways of carrying them out.

From their website:

Here’s the quick and dirty summary of this document. While this page summarizes top- level takeaways, the full document describes how to actually carry out these activities.

CHAPTER 1

How grassroots advocacy worked to stop President Obama. We examine lessons from the Tea Party’s rise and recommend two key strategic components:

A local strategy targeting individual Members of Congress (MoCs).

A defensive approach purely focused on stopping Trump from implementing an agenda built on racism, authoritarianism, and corruption.

CHAPTER 2

How your MoC thinks — reelection, reelection, reelection — and how to use that to save democracy. MoCs want their constituents to think well of them and they want good, local press. They hate surprises, wasted time, and most of all, bad press that makes them look weak, unlikable, and vulnerable. You will use these interests to make them listen and act.

CHAPTER 3

Identify or organize your local group. Is there an existing local group or network you can join? Or do you need to start your own? We suggest steps to help mobilize your fellow constituents locally and start organizing for action.

CHAPTER 4

Four local advocacy tactics that actually work. Most of you have three MoCs — two Senators and one Representative. Whether you like it or not, they are your voices in Washington. Your job is to make sure they are, in fact, speaking for you. We’ve identified four key opportunity areas that just a handful of local constituents can use to great effect. Always record encounters on video, prepare questions ahead of time, coordinate with your group, and report back to local media:

Town halls. MoCs regularly hold public in-district events to show that they are listening to constituents. Make them listen to you, and report out when they don’t.